Tweeting to Engage—What Worked and Didn’t Work Tweeting with #NHsmc

Posted on by Alex Rouhandeh

Overview of Tweeting

At the start of NHsmc I had 217 followers on Twitter. Now, I have 235 followers, a 8.3% growth over a roughly three and a half month period. I gained 12 of these 17 new followers in January and February, during the time in which I did the most posting using the NHsmc hashtag. While I was originally skeptical about the use of hashtags, it seems clear that they had no negative impact on my Twitter presence. In fact, tweeting consistently with this hashtag seemed to lead to this overall growth. Furthermore, I noticed that tweets with a photo or video performed quite well. Prior to this class, I usually posted text only tweets, so this insight will be helpful to incorporate in my future posts. On the flip side, texts that came off authoritative, overly serious, random, and not timely did not perform well. And in weeks where I tweeted less, the tweets I did post seemed to get less engagement. Here are my top 10 performing tweets that led me to understanding those insights:

Insights of Growth

One of my top tweets was the meme I posted for the social media challenge.

This Tweet received six likes, 440 impressions, 115 engagements, 70 media engagements, one profile click, 37 details expanded, and an engagement rate of 26.1%. Though I did not use the class hashtag or include a text caption, I think the meme worked because it spoke for itself as an image. At the time it was posted, this meme was quite timely, so I think my followers responded well to this because it was a timely take on a timely meme that happened to be relatable and funny.

Another tweet that performed well was my introductory tweet to my followers about using the NHsmc hashtag.

This tweet received 10 likes, two retweets, and one comment. Additionally, it received 1,167 impressions, 53 engagements, 28 profile clicks, three details expanded, and an engagement rate of 4.5%. This tweet got a lot of likes for me. I think it worked because I made fun of my social media skills while also letting people know I would be taking an interesting class. A lot of my twitter followers are people from home and school, so I think they were interested to hear what I’d be doing. Also, I think this was a good tweet because it eased my followers into this new style of tweeting.

My promotion tweet, introducing my followers to my new website, also did quite well.

This tweet received six likes, one retweet, and two comments. Furthermore, it got 553 impressions, 27 total engagements, 15 link clicks, one detail expand, and one profile click. It recieved a 4.9% engagement rate. Similar to the last tweet, this tweet let people know what I had been up to while presenting the information in a light and grateful manner. With my followers being a small community, I think they actually care about what I’m doing, so this tweet provided a glimpse into my personal happenings.

Another tweet that earned good reception was my side by side photo tweet.

I think people liked this tweet it was authentic, pro-feminism, and funny. People on Twitter had been tweeting about not letting a man judge a woman for wearing makeup, so this tweet fit that trend by acknowledging the shocking difference of my face with a beard versus without a beard, amplified by the other similarities between the two photos. This tweet received 11 likes, 546 impressions, 89 total engagements, 70 media engagements, five detail expands, three profile visits, and a 16.3% engagement rate. Overall, self humor seems to do well on humor as well as progressive content.

My #BabyNut tweet cracked the top 10.

Though it only received two likes, it got 496 impressions, six total engagements, four profile clicks, and a 1.2% engagement rate. I think this tweet performed well since it connected to what we ‘d spoken about in NHsmc, bringing in engagement from our class community. We had spoken about Baby Yoda, so this commentary on Baby Nut proved to be incredibly timely, making it a somewhat successful tweet.

One of my quote tweets also performed amongst the top.

I think this tweet did well because the headline in the original tweet was incredibly outlandish, and I amplified it by writing my quote tweet in a similar fashion and relating it to the stresses currently being felt by a large portion of my audience. This tweet received five likes, 472 impressions, six total engagements, and a 1.3% engagement rate. It was not the most engaging tweet, but it did receive a decent amount of likes.

A tweet promoting one of my blog posts ranked as one of my most successful tweets.

Despite sad tweets not always doing well, this timely tweet about the death of Kobe Bryant received good engagement. It got two likes, one retweet, 449 impressions, eight total engagements, four details expanded, one link click, and a 1.1% engagement rate. The subject manner was interesting in that it connected memes to a celebrity death. So, I think people found this tweet to be interesting and informational, making it somewhat successful.

Surprisingly, my “Getting to Know Me” tweet also made the top 10.

This tweet got one like, one reply, 402 impressions, 25 engagements, 10 profile clicks, and six detail expands. I think this tweet did well because I tagged three accounts, so people associated with those accounts may have run into this tweet. Additionally, Professor Grygiel responded to it, so that may have boosted the number of people who ran into it. Engaging people directly seems to boost the overall engagement of a tweet. And as we know, when a tweet gets attention it starts to snowball in terms of how much attention it receives.

My social media IRL performed well.

This tweet got one like, 348 impressions, 56 total engagements, 51 media engagements, two profile clicks, one detail expands, and a 16.1% engagement rate. I think this did well because it features a nice message: “Spread Peace.” A lot of people have fond memories writing in the snow, so people may enjoy this tweet in that aspect, making it relatable. That, or maybe people just wanted to click on it to better read what it said.

My last tweet that cracked the top 10 was a native video tweet.

This video, taken at the corner of Waverly and Irving Avenues, features a saxophone player drowning out the yelling of one of the local street corner “preachers.” This tweet got three likes, 348 impressions, 56 total engagements, 51 media engagements, two profile clicks, one details expanded, and a 10.8% engagement rate. Many people at SU have had some sort of experience with the street preachers, so being in this scenario is familiar. The saxophone player drowning out the preaching was a funny and artistic way of silencing some of the preacher’s hateful rhetoric. Those that made that connection probably enjoyed this tweet.

 

Final Thoughts

My four biggest takeaways from posting using #NHsmc are: Pictures and videos drive engagement, curating posts to your audience is essential because it makes the content relatable, timeliness should drive content, people usually want humor, and tweeting often keeps you on your follower’s radar. My tweets that performed the best took into account each of these five elements. And looking back at my past tweets, the ones that did best took into account these five rules. As I grow as a professional and refine my brand and audience, I will be able to curate even better tweets that hit on all five of these aspects. As social media becomes even more engrained in the journalism industry, creating these types of tweets will become even more essential to getting information out. I look forward to using what I have learned towards building my social media portfolio in the future.

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